PR case study: Munch – Revels in Hand

Picture credit: Tomas Turpie

Munch secured coverage and demonstrated ROI for exclusive theatre troupe Revels in Handby hosting a luxury preview event at a glamorous location for selected journalists. 

Campaign: The West End in Your Living Room
Client: Revels in Hand
PR Team: Munch
Timing: Three months
Budget: £15,000

Summary

In summer 2018, Munch launched exclusive theatre troupe Revels in Hand and its bespoke performances for high net-worth audiences, taking place in homes, hotels and private venues.

Munch’s powers of persuasion saw an intimate yet prestigious press launch at the Shangri-La Hotel at The Shard with a Noël Coward double bill performed for seven key journalists. The agency secured the hotel’s most luxurious £10,000-a-night signature suite for free and also arranged an eight-evening fee-earning performance residency at the venue.

The campaign’s ROI was worth many multiples of the budget, with 70+ pieces of coverage delivering new bookings and partnership opportunities worldwide.

Objectives

Founders Lucy Eaton, Mel Fulbrook and Freddie Hutchins, wanted to launch their new concept, Revels in Hand, to a targeted audience of high-net-worth individuals to drive bookings. They wanted Revels to be the world’s most luxurious private theatre experience in a way that shows off their intimate, at-home concept. Their goals were to achieve 30 pieces of coverage in:

• Mainstream media
• Publications read by high net-worth individuals
• Trade and corporate print/online

Revels in Hand also wanted a return on the £15,000 budget through new bookings (a performance starts at £5,000), and to ignite conversations/meetings with corporate brands and travel industry.

With limited spend and this being its first purposeful PR activity, Revels wanted a simple and effective strategy and execution to bring positive word of mouth about its performances to those who would book them in the future.

Strategy and implementation

Munch’s clear strategy of reaching not only high net worth individuals but also those within the hotel and wider travel industries, as well as corporate entertainment buyers, had the aim to generate new long-term business relationships, one-off bookings and recurring residencies.

This strategy brought the exclusivity of the proposition to life through a series of performances with an initial launch attended by media and influencers – capturing everyone from the FTand Guardian to important print trade media and broadcast.

A clear take away was set – Revels in Hand were the go-to troupe for unique, inventive, innovative and exclusive private entertainment.

Munch was also able to implement Revels’ overriding objective to forge high-quality partnerships, allowing the budget to be maximised while proving the luxurious, intimate and bespoke nature of the proposition through direct experience.

Campaign implementation was hugely successful thanks to Munch’s creative thinking to negotiate free use of London’s luxury Shangri-La hotel at The Shard. Using the hotel for the one-off launch performance captured mass media attention, with management agreeing purely in return for the positive coverage it would receive.

The troupe performed two short Noël Coward plays in its £10,000-a-night signature suite, with scenes in both the bedroom and sitting room. The hotel also laid on free Champagne and canapés for the specially targeted journalists of high profile national and luxury media titles.

Munch also negotiated complimentary luxury taxi travel for media via Wheely’s fleet of executive cars, enhancing the theme of exclusivity and luxury.

Munch was even able to follow this by securing a series of paid-for performances at the hotel, one per month from September to December, with another four more to play. This totalled £12,000 towards the client’s goal of recouping its initial PR spend.

How did Cision help with the campaign?

Munch used the Cision database to assist with the pinpoint targeting of journalists and media outlets consumed by both high net worth individuals and workers in the hotel and wider travel industries, and corporate entertainment buyers.

The agency also used Cision’s software to track the reach of the coverage the campaign achieved.

Results

Widespread and varied coverage for Revels in Hand – more than 70 different hits, including 33 broadcast pieces – meant all of the key objectives were met. Numerous pieces showed off the quality and exclusivity of the experience, incorporating key messaging.

It led to Revels in Hand having 15-20 meetings with new clients in November and December 2018 alone. Direct income from the campaign is already worth four times the value of the initial budget, with more in the pipeline.

Aside from the Shangri-La partnership Munch secured, the campaign was able to offer a number of leads for the Revels to follow up on afterwards including an international warm business lead – in the Bahamas.

Stories targeting an “elite and wealthy” audience appeared in print in The Telegraph, The Timesand a full page three of Saturday’s Guardian, with the latter’s wealth correspondent Rupert Neate calling it “the latest must-have for the wealthy: a private West End theatre production.” An online piece in the FT’s influential How to Spend It section lauded Revels’ performance as “the ultimate party piece”.

Prominent local titles such as the Cambridge Independent and Oxford Mail also ran stories and broadcast coverage appeared on Sky News, globally via APTN and across BBC local radio.

The campaign was also covered by theatrical and travel trade press including The Stage and Arts Journal, with significant international traction too, from a ‘48 hours in London’ piece that appeared in the South African print edition of Marie Claire to an online story in Vogue India and in Malaysia’s Robb Report.

Testimonials

Freddie Hutchins, Revels in Hand founder, said: “Working with Munch has been a real pleasure. Their commitment, knowledge and professionalism has been invaluable in helping us achieve our objectives. We are a small business and hiring a PR agency was a big step, however Munch far exceeded our expectations in terms of the reach and profile they were able to achieve for us.

“Their work has made connections and opened doors that we’re sure will result in significant and lasting benefit. We’re already recommending them to everybody, and look forward to working with them again in the future!”

Fellow founder Lucy Eaton added: “We’ve had numerous meetings with big corporations including banks and legal firms to provide corporate entertainment, which has only happened because we have the coverage to back us up. The success of Munch’s campaign has also enabled us to embark on approaches to American businesses with much more certainty of success because our public profile has so vastly increased.”